Invasive carp: U prof has plan, needs money - NOW

University of Minnesota professor Peter Sorensen, left, and researcher Dan Zielinski sit Wednesday in a 10,000 liter tank in which they have created sound and bubble barriers to divert invasive Asian carp. They hope to receive $60,000 in funding to order and install five speakers to repel carp at Lock & Dam No. 8 on the Mississippi River at Genoa, Wis. (Pioneer Press: Scott Takushi)

The carp invading Minnesota up the Mississippi River could be stopped -- at least for several years.

It would only cost $60,000.

So says the man with a plan -- University of Minnesota researcher Peter Sorensen

The problem: He doesn't have the money.

And he needs it now to make his plan work.

Any donors?

"We'll take money from wherever we can get it," said Sorensen, who heads the Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center at the U's St. Paul campus. "We need to put these things in the water as soon as possible."

Those "things" are five transducers -- underwater speakers -- that Sorensen and his team want to install at Lock and Dam No. 8 on the Mississippi River near Genoa, Wis.

Bighead or silver carp, possibly both, are successfully breeding below the dam, researchers discovered last month. But there's no evidence the fish, often called Asian carp, are breeding above it in Pool 8, which extends north along the Minnesota-Wisconsin border to La Crosse, Wis.

Sorensen and his team, including doctoral student Dan Zielinski, have discovered that the carp are sensitive to -- and annoyed and deterred by -- sounds not heard by most other fish. The speakers would play those sounds just downstream of the lock, which is the carp's most likely doorway farther into Minnesota.

"Our goal is to design a deflector shield around the lock," Sorensen said.

Time is of the essence, he said, because bighead and silver carp swim upstream to spawn, and spawning will begin this summer.

Sorensen's traditional sources for money -- the U and the Legislature -- don't turn around funding rapidly, so Sorensen is soliciting donations, which would be handled through the University of Minnesota Foundation (giving.umn.edu).

THE PLAN

The transducers are part of a larger plan developed by Sorensen to slow or halt the spread of the carp. The plan is based on his team's discovery of two of the carp's vulnerabilities: a sensitivity to sound and inability to swim that fast.

A carp's "hearing" is 10 to 100 times more acute than that of all native fish, except catfish, because of a rib bone that vibrates against its swim bladder, essentially turning the organ into a large eardrum. In a study of carp in a tank, Zielisnki found that by playing combinations of louder and softer low-frequency sounds -- a din similar to a boat motor -- he could both annoy and deflect the fish.

"I started researching bubble curtains for common carp, but what I found out was they were likely responding to the sound of the bubbles more than the bubbles themselves," Zielinski said.

Silver carp, known for spectacular leaps from the water when boats speed by, likely are fleeing the sound of the motor, he said.

Meanwhile, Sorensen's lab and the U worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to find out how fast carp can swim.

"It turns out their swimming capabilities are very normal," Sorensen said. "Similar to a walleye, but much slower than a salmon."

That meant that if the Army Corps, which operates the lock-and-dam system, could keep water flowing fast enough through the dam's gates, carp could not swim through.

Which leaves the lock. The underwater motorboat sound would protect that.

The plan might sound similar to a much pricier proposal -- $12 million to $19 million -- to build an acoustic, bubble and light barrier at the Ford Dam in St. Paul.

But the goal of that proposal, which hasn't yet been funded, was to get as close as possible to a 100-percent barrier.

"We're not saying (we expect) 100 percent (success) for our plan," Sorensen said. "We're saying maybe 90 percent, maybe better. We're just talking about a simple cheap thing that can brush them off. ... As long as they don't have the numbers to establish themselves, we've bought time. Once they establish themselves as a breeding population, we have absolutely nothing to get rid of them."

Both the underwater speakers and the changes in the dam's gate procedures need formal approval from the Army Corps, but neither would threaten navigation or the structure of the lock and dam, so the agency doesn't expect any delays, said Shannon Bauer, public affairs chief for the Army Corps' St. Paul district.

CHEAP PLAN

It was cost $45,000 to obtain the speakers and $15,000 to install them. By comparison, tens of millions of dollars are being spent to battle aquatic invaders that range from zebra mussels to curly leaf pondweed.

Bighead and silver carp are seen as a major threat to Minnesota's waters and the state's fishing. The fish voraciously eat plankton, the base of a water's ecology, and where they've established themselves, native fish suffer.

Lawmakers generally have supported spending money to fight aquatic invaders. For example, the state Senate this month approved a plan to give $5 million this year -- and $10 million annually after that -- to counties statewide for the battle. The provision wasn't part of the accompanying tax bill approved by the House, so it remains unclear whether it will become law.

Sen. Rod Skoe, DFL-Clearbrook, who introduced the plan, said it dovetails with Department of Natural Resources efforts to act as a central clearinghouse for programs that work. To that end, the Legacy Amendment bill moving through the Legislature contains $4 million from the Outdoor Heritage Fund for the DNR to develop and evaluate pilot projects to battle aquatic invaders.

And Sorenson's underwater speakers are actually already on track for state funding as part of an $800,000 request supported by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources, which recommends a portion of lottery proceeds for the environment.

BEYOND SCIENCE

But that money cannot be appropriated until July 1, and U rules prohibit spending money until a grant has been approved.

"It would be another year before we got this done via the official channels," Sorensen said. "The machinery can only move so fast."

Soliciting donations is an unusual role for Sorensen, who frequently preaches that the campaign against invasive species is long-term and requires years of research.

But he said his perspective changed in March when federal scientists discovered that Asian carp had fertilized eggs downstream of Lock and Dam No. 8 near Lynxsville, Wis.

"It kind of kills me because it's not really research and we're still studying how to make sure we do as much as we can to not affect native fish," he said. "But when the news came out about the eggs, I thought about it for a while and came to the conclusion that I just needed to do something."